I remember busting up laughing out loud towards the end of FARNHAM'S FREEHOLD when Hugh Farnham suddenly realizes who the raggedy crazy old man was that showed up at his door at the beginning of the story. Great ending! Perhaps the most satisfying ending I've ever read in a SF novel.

I like Last Man/Post Apocolypse stuff best. Just discovered how much I liked it a couple years ago. I used to think "How depressing!", but it's not. It has the opposite effect, it's life affirming. It's a struggle for survival, solitude, loneliness, and retrospective thoughts on all that was lost, and how to rebuild. And sometimes coming to terms with the fact that things will never be as they once were. It makes you appreciate even the worst our civilization has to offer. THE POSTMAN by David Brin is a gem, as well as my all-time fave EARTH ABIDES by George R. Stewart.

I've read a lot of Time Travel and Robot stuff too. Clifford Simak's PROJECT POPE is an outstanding robot novel, and you can't go wrong with Asimov's I, ROBOT and CAVES OF STEEL. TIMESCAPE by Benford is a good time travel yarn, but a little depressing. CHRONOSPACE by Allen Steele is worth reading, he's my favorite active SF novelist. But, he seems to have succumbed to that dreaded sickness nearly all SF authors have nowadays (and is killing the genre) "Serialitis", after having resisted for several years. The stand-alone SF novel will make a comeback someday, at least that's what I keep telling myself. Sadly, there is a strong temptation for writers to keep pumping out books that are part of a series and are pressured by their publishers to keep doing it. Even Stephen King is doing it. Many authors have more than one series going at a time, I think Orson Scott Card had four different series' going at one time. ENOUGH!!! Fortunately, there is enough old school novels out there that I never have to buy anything by these fancy-schmancy serializing murderers of my beloved Science Fiction. So there, put that in your pipe and smoke it!

grasstains,
You got that right!

[This message has been edited by Chapter 31 (edited 04-02-2006).]

Thats what I'm talkin about, great post Grass! I love that ending too, I've often thought in terms of what I would say if that happened to me! I want to check those Bot books out too! Thanx!

(...grumble, grumble...young whippersnappers don't read Jules Verne or even H.G. Wells any more! Hmmpf! Probably never even heard of G.K. Chesterton!...Well, it's no wonder they can't see Xanadu in this here mirage - seein' as how they never read Coleridge any more either! Wonder what they do see?.....)

He said whippersnappers! In a way your right, I haven't read either of those. I do however have a thick yellow cloth bound edition of H.G. Wells stories. My son has it in his room, I may get it back. He did not read yet too. Thanks ya young Geezer!

Good points. Let�s hope readers don�t become so �persnickety� that they forget Ray Bradbury the way they forgot Chesterton. And Coleridge? ��stately pleasure dome��, etc, �Kubla Khan� 1798, right? You could charge admission. And anything by Verne is worth the time, especially �Twenty Thousand Leagues� and �Center of the Earth� (sorry about the shortening). And Wells? I cant say how many times I�ve read �The Time Machine� and �The Invisible Man�.

[This message has been edited by Chapter 31 (edited 04-03-2006).]

I've read Wells and Verne, not the others.

Did you know??? Verne hated Wells. Legend has it that Jules Verne paid for space in London's top newspaper challenging Wells to explain exactly how a "time machine" works, what kind of concoction a man could drink to become invisible, how are three legs more practical than two, or even four etc. Verne took his science pretty seriously and claimed Wells was merely a "fantasist" and a fraud. Verne was getting on in years and was probably more than just a little jealous of the young upstart.

People who have read Verne's original untranslated text in French as well as the English translations consider the English translation to be rubbish. Apparently he could lay down some beautifully poetic prose that just doesn't translate well. It's a shame that I'll never really know, as I don't intend to learn French anytime soon. Captain Nemo is my all-time favorite fictional character, despite his hateful slaughtering of the Sperm Whales. But what did we really know about Sperm Whales in the 80s--The 1880s? And I really dig using a cannon to get men on the moon.

Hanging in my mind's gallery of mental images right up there next to the silhouettes of the children reaching for a ball which will never come down in "There Will Come Soft Rains" is "The Invisible Man" in literature's ultimate "OH CR@P!" moment when his muddy feet are spotted by the young street urchins in the rain soaked streets of London.

And then there's the Tripods...

Robo,

You must take that book and read it.


[This message has been edited by grasstains (edited 04-03-2006).]

grasstains,
I agree with you about Captain Nemo. Just his name is intriguing. And what you say about the translations is absolutely true. Also, you can find any number of versions of the translation of �Twenty Thousand Leagues� where even the first paragraphs are different.

wOw! Great info on those posts you guys. Where else you gonna find this kind of info all in one spot?

---

About these new cellphone ads? Hey, Dandelion! Can you still 'erase' them?

I recently re-read "Mysterious Island" and really enjoyed it! Great characters, suspense, humour, plot, style...I could go on.

I actually taught the unabridged version of M.I. to 8th graders back, oh, a few years ago. Brilliant story. (HG and JV were not on very good terms, as the anecdotes go.)

The vocabulary was intriguing. I recall doing major exercises just to detemine what the heck ol' Jules was talking about. Great stuff. Attention spans for most hs groups would get me to, maybe, the end of Chap. 1, now-a-days.

It was my first run in with a "Peccary." (Uh, sorry about those shoes!) http://images.google.com/images?svnum=10&hl=en&lr=&rls=...=pecary+&btnG=Search


[This message has been edited by fjpalumbo (edited 04-03-2006).]

Thats, sadly, probably why I didn't read them in my yute. I think I thought they were outdated and obsolete, not how I think now, just how I thought probably in H.S. when Heinlein & Bradbury were "The" writers for me. Later I got into the classics and those two authors somehow passed by the wayside. I won't let it slip though, I have started a list of all recommendations from all of you, both poetry and novelists. My short list is no longer exactly short! Thanks to all.

p.s. he said persnickety.

thats my way of saying, thats funny, Chapter. I just finished making my list, took almost two hours to compile. Grasstains thank you for that wonderful and insightful list of books, I could read forever and never be as intelligent as you all!

[This message has been edited by Robot Lincoln (edited 04-03-2006).]

[This message has been edited by Robot Lincoln (edited 04-04-2006).]

The trick is finding the time to read everything one wants to read! Your night watchperson (p.c, you know) gig sounds ideal.
I try to follow the advice of one of my very favourites, Robert Benchley who said,
"Anyone can do any amount of work provided it isn't the work he is supposed to be doing at the moment."

true, true, sometimes you can get shown the light in the strangest places if you look at it right. Bookstore owner in a small town would be ideal too maybe. Lately been dreaming of buying(we dabble in rental properties like my Dad, he owns buku, we own several houses, and one two bedroom four plex)some kind of commercial property where in one of the units, I would have a high class coffee shop/bookstore/studio(for art) On Fridays and Saturdays, we'd have open poetry readings and or stories readings. If it flummuxed out, I could still keep studio and rent out the rest. Thats the general angle I'm working in my head right now. Its do-able though as far as the numbers. Oh, and of course it is to be called, Murmurs Coffee Establishment, Purveyers of the Future, Artisans of the Past. O.k., maybe just Murmurs.

Robo,

I have a similar dream. Hey, some of those books we were talking about (20,000 Leagues, Time Machine, War/Worlds) are available to read for free online, just to the left and down http://speculativevision.com/library/

[This message has been edited by grasstains (edited 04-04-2006).]